Hi Experts, I have a question, since I am new to this tool. Currently I have a subscription to Google AI Studio Pro. However I have a free tier account. I have linked my API key to my project, set up my billing account, however, I didn’t pay 10 dollars yet to enable the billing. My question is since I am using the pro AI studio version, shall I still be billed for the services as pay as you go? Or my Pro subscription will suffice for the services that I use? I don’t want to set up an active billing unless I have full transparency to this. I look forward to your support.
Thank you for reaching out. To provide you with full transparency, it is important to clarify that consumer subscriptions (such as Gemini Advanced or Google One AI Premium) and Google AI Studio API usage are completely separate billing systems.
Your existing “Pro” subscription does not cover API usage in Google AI Studio. Here is exactly how the billing works:
Free Tier: As long as you do not link an active Google Cloud Billing account to your project, you remain on the Free Tier. You will not be charged, but you will be subject to strict API rate limits.
Pay-As-You-Go Tier: If you fully set up and enable an active Google Cloud Billing account for your project, your account automatically upgrades to the Pay-As-You-Go tier. From that moment on, you will be billed per token for all API requests, regardless of any other Google subscriptions you hold.
Conclusion: If you do not want to incur usage-based API charges, do not enable or link an active billing account to your Google AI Studio project. You can safely continue exploring and testing the models using the Free Tier limits.
I hope this clears up any confusion! Let me know if you have further questions.